Flying the Coop
Part III of IV


Photo: The Villalobos family residence in Havana's Miramar neighborhood. Circa 1957.

At around 1 a.m. on the morning of October 10, 1960, the prisoners, accompanied by four complicit guards, made their way down to the shoreline below Morro Castle with several uniforms safely packed. Hiding amid the shoreline rocks, they could see the faint lights of a ship far off in the distance and began to send the pre-established signal. Whether the signal light was obscured and not visible by the cutter, or the Coast Guard had pulled the plug on the operation is unknown. No raft ever arrived to recover the group. From then on, the men would have to resort to fallback plans and improvisation. Taking to the water, the group swam a few hundred yards to a stretch of shoreline near an auto tunnel that cuts through the Bay of Havana. Donning the stolen military uniforms, they were able to hitch rides into the city’s downtown area sometime later in the pre-dawn hours. From a safe-house, the men made contact with Villalobos, who would await the arrival of half the group at the family residence in the city’s Miramar neighborhood, then home to Cuba’s most prominent families. Some time later, the gates of 601, Fifth Avenue creaked open. The headlights of a car illuminated the darkened home’s interior as Villalobos emerged from the mansion’s garage-side entrance to usher the men inside. The mansion, with its lights extinguished, took on a forbidding air as the men found their way up a winding marble staircase into what had once been the bedroom of Eugenio’s sister and brother-in-law. Only two months earlier, they had fled to Miami along with their children and Eugenio’s mother, and were unaware of the developments back in Havana. Villalobos gave Captain Raul Barandela a revolver to use in case anything went awry. With that, the fugitive collapsed on a soft bed for the first time in months and drifted off to sleep, the revolver safe below his pillow.


Photo: Huber Matos' adjutants were housed in a second floor bedroom highlighted in this black and white photograph.

The following morning found Villalobos in his Havana office, awaiting further instructions on how to smuggle the men out of the country when his phone rang. His sister Nena shouted frantically on the other end of the line that a gunshot had gone off in the bedroom upstairs. Terrified that the shot might have been heard by Havana’s now ubiquitous militiamen, she begged her brother to get back to the house as quickly as possible. Entering the house, Villalobos went straight for the upstairs bedroom where he found all five men, alive and well. At some point during the early morning hours, while the exhausted men slept, one of the guards, doubting the promises of a space on the boat out of Cuba, had attempted suicide. Fearing he was about to be left behind and sold-out, he pulled the revolver, ever-so-gently, out from beneath Barandela’s pillow. A struggle ensued as the five men fought for possession of the gun and a shot pierced the quiet of the vast mansion. Barandela eventually regained control of the weapon but it took Villalobos some time to reassure the frightened guard that no one would be left behind before he was finally put at ease.


Photos: Villalobos family photos taken at the family's residence, where Matos' adjutants would later be hidden.

In the early years of the revolutionary government, militiamen were a common sight in Havana’s neighborhoods. The ever-present threat of a U.S. invasion or an internal uprising was constantly on the minds of the revolutionary hierarchy, which dispatched pairs of eyes throughout the capital city’s many neighborhoods. Villalobos would have to concoct an excuse for the sound of gunfire that had pierced the quiet of the upscale neighborhood. Taking a starter’s pistol as well as several other toys from his nephew’s bedroom closet, he littered the floor of the foyer with every manner of toy car, plush animal and, of course, the pistol. Reasoning he would simply explain to any curious police or militiamen that the boy had been playing with the starter’s pistol inside the house, Eugenio Villalobos, his sister Nena and their nervous guests settled down for another night at the house on Fifth Avenue. It would prove to be a nerve-wracking evening of waiting for a knock on the door that luckily, never came.

Please return for part IV on 2/1/07

Flying the Coop
Part II of IV
Photo: Fidel Castro and Camilo Cienfuegos in 1959.

When Camilo Cienfuegos eventually arrived in October of 1959, the two men retired to Matos’ private residence for a long discussion over steaming cups of Cuban coffee. Cienfuegos, whose close relationship with Matos had been born in the Sierra Maestra mountains during the fight to depose Batista, spoke with trepidation, confirming Matos’ fears of arrest. “You realize they sent you here to die, right?,” Matos asked his young comrade. Throughout the revolution, Castro had proven himself a brilliant tactician and propagandist with a foresight that bordered on paranoia. When the New York Times sent veteran journalist Herbert Matthews into the Cuban jungle to interview the young revolutionary, Castro ordered his small band of fighters to walk past the two men, issuing fictitious orders between one another and double-back, minutes later to give the illusion of a far larger force than was actually present in the Sierras. Castro realized the loyalty Matos had won from his men could mean an armed confrontation when the young Comandante Camilo Cienfuegos arrived to arrest their commander. Today, some theorize that Cienfuegos, a popular icon of the revolution in its early years, had become too beloved by the Cuban people for Castro’s taste. As such, he created a situation that could both eliminate the perceived threat to his hold over the country’s loyalty while setting up Matos to become a traitor as he’d been accused. No such revolt would occur however, owing to Matos’ strict orders and his soldiers’ allegiance. That very same day, Matos and several of his leading adjutants, including Napoleon Bequer, Raul Barandela and Dionisio Suarez, began the trip back to Havana under heavy guard. Bequer, incidentally, was included in the roundup after having rebuffed Castro’s overtures to replace Matos in Camaguey.

Today, a wrinkled man of 87, Matos describes his subsequent trial as a “kangaroo court” where witnesses were prevented from testifying and Matos’ own defense statements were cut short by the five-man military tribunal hand-picked by Castro. After only four days, Matos and his men were convicted and sentenced to varying prison terms, with Matos receiving twenty years. “With that, we were transferred to El Morro,” the old Spanish fortress that has guarded the entrance to Havana harbor for centuries.

Shortly thereafter, the life off Eugenio Villalobos and the legend of Huber Matos would become intertwined as a result of a somewhat failed rescue attempt that wouldn’t come to Matos’ attention until after his 1979 release.

Photo: "It wasn't vengeance that motivated me." -Juan Eugenio Villalobos

In June of 1960, on a trip to Miami, Villalobos met with an old friend, Henry Fernandez Silva. Before his exile, Silva had been the president of a leading insurance company that had enjoyed close business ties with the Villalobos Shipyards. During a discussion one evening, he approached Villalobos with a plan to spring Matos from prison. A small group of prominent exiles, led by Silva, had made contact with four prison guards at Morro Castle who would assist in ferrying Matos and his adjutants from their cells, down to a rocky area below the fortress under cover of darkness. Disenchanted with the direction of the revolutionary government, they had agreed to the plan as long as they were permitted to come along for the ride. Once entrenched in the craggy shoreline, the group of men would use a high-powered flashlight to alert a small Coast Guard cutter stationed just outside Cuban waters. If all went well, a small recovery raft would be dispatched to transport the men back to the cutter and spirit them off to the safety of south Florida, after which, they would presumably be used in the impending Bay of Pigs invasion. As one of the chief commanders during the revolution, Matos’ knowledge of Castro’s tactics and fighting methods would be invaluable to the group of U.S.-trained exiles who intended to liberate the island. Solutions for every conceivable mishap were worked out before hand, one of them being the decision to flee the prison complex along with several stolen army uniforms. In the end, the theft of the uniforms would serve as the group’s salvation. Villalobos’s role would be the enlistment of volunteers from a U.S. Coast Guard facility located off the MacArthur Causeway in Miami. In addition, he would function as one of the point-men in Havana if anything were to go wrong.

Silva’s plan was somewhat flawed from the beginning, however. Although Matos had originally been interned at Morro Castle, he had been transferred to a prison complex on Cuba’s Isle of Pines, months earlier. The operation would go on as planned, however, since Matos’ direct subordinates were still serving their sentences at the old Spanish fort back in Havana.

Please return for part III on 1/29/07

Flying the Coop
Part I of IV

Photos L-R: Huber Matos at his Miami residence and shortly after his arrest in October of 1959.

Forty-six years ago, Juan Eugenio Villalobos was struggling amid the opening salvos of Fidel Castro’s revolutionary government when a chance encounter with a friend hoping to oust the strong-arm dictator changed the course of his life. An heir to one of Cuba’s largest industrial operations, Villalobos, then a man of 35, was about to be drawn directly into a drama that played out more like a cloak and dagger paperback thriller than true-life intrigue.


Photo: Juan Villalobos

“I was a man who had never before involved himself in politics” says Juan, now an 81-year-old resident of Miami as he dusts off aging black and white photographs of the shipyards his father, Ramon Villalobos built over the course of 50 years. Until recently, the Cuban government ran the shipyards in a joint operation with the Dutch-owned Curacao Drydock Company, and in 2003, members of the Villalobos family registered the confiscated shipyards with the U.S. State Department’s Helms-Burton unit, intent on rebuilding the family business once the Castro regime falls. Although Villalobos was a self-described “apolitical,” his father’s companies had enjoyed numerous lucrative government contracts over the years. During the final years of the Cuban revolution, the shipyards, located in Havana's Casablanca district, had received a contract to apply armor plating to military trucks. The deal would come back to haunt Astilleros Villalobos and, indeed, the entire Villalobos clan. In April of 1960, the revolutionary government seized onto the possibility that vehicles outfitted at the shipyards might have been used by government forces to “hunt down and kill” rebel soldiers. The fledgling government would use the contracts as a pretext for confiscating the shipyards. Subsequently, a May 1960 issue of Cuba’s Official Gazette listed the “seizure of all equipment, utilities, tools, materials, etc” of Astilleros Villalobos, “known for its docks and factories. . .” Villalobos and his entire family were publicly slandered, put out of work and systematically harassed. One relative had already been sentenced to death over an unrelated issue and thus, Juan had more than enough reason to assist in a plan that would contribute to Fidel’s downfall. Leaning back in his chair, recalling the events of the autumn of 1960, Villalobos remarks that although he never agreed with Matos’ ideology and methods, he appreciated the way in which he would eventually confront Castro with allegations of communist infiltration in the new government. “It wasn’t vengeance that motivated me. It was a desire to do what was right for Cuba.”

Photo at left: The 1960 copy of Cuba's Official Gazette listing the seizure of the Villalobos Shipyards and a photo of a ship under construction (circa 1957).

On January 8, 1959, Huber Matos, formerly a teacher in Cuba’s Oriente Province, rode into Havana atop a U.S.-built Sherman tank alongside a bearded revolutionary named Fidel Castro. Matos, one of the top commanders in Castro’s rebel army, would later be installed as the military commander of Camaguey Province, but fate would deal him a different card. “I had become wary of where the revolution was headed after the tone of certain articles in the military gazette, Verde Olivo, took a decidedly Marxist turn.” On numerous occasions throughout 1959, Matos warned Castro that the revolution was in danger of being hijacked by communists. “He would blow me off, telling me there was nothing to worry about.” Finally, after repeated dismissals by Castro, Huber Matos announced his resignation in a heartfelt letter to Fidel, in which he explained his desire to avoid becoming an obstacle to the revolution. With words that sounded like those coming from a trusted friend, Matos wrote “I also want you to understand that this decision is irreversible, which is why I’m asking you not as Commander Huber Matos, but rather, like any of your friends from the Sierra – Do you remember? . . . . letting me return to my home as a civilian without my children having to hear in the street that their father was a deserter or traitor.” At that point, Matos had no desire to mount an insurrection against his former boss, although nearly 50 years later, Matos has made clear the fact that he would have eventually led his rabidly loyal troops against Castro. Resigning as Camaguey’s military commander, Matos had decided to take up teaching in his childhood home of Manzanillo.

Within 24 hours, a response came from Havana. “Fidel wrote back to me that he accepted my resignation and was sending Camilo [Cienfuegos] to relieve me.” Matos became alarmed by the somewhat insulting tone of the letter, however, and word quickly spread through the Camaguey military barracks that Cienfuegos’ true mission was the arrest of Huber Matos on charges of counter-revolutionary activities. The commander who had won the unflinching loyalty of his troops knew a bloodbath could ensue if he allowed the rumors to spread unchecked and without a personal response. With this in mind, he ordered his troops to stand-down upon the arrival of Cienfuegos, no matter what.

Avoid the Rocks

*Note: The author has changed some names and/or locations to protect those individuals residing in Cuba.


Emilio (R) smokes a cigarette after a day spent hunting octopus.

“You’ve gone snorkeling before, right?”

Yes, I had gone snorkeling before: as a child, in swimming pools and backwoods ponds, and as an adult, in still reef waters where you might as well be sleeping on a cushion of air. I had not, however, been snorkeling in Mariel. On this day, my cousin Emilio and I would join two family friends in the Cuban seaside town, on a mission to hunt octopus which would later be sold for ceviche on Cuba’s ever-expanding black market. In a nation where the average state salary often rings in at around 250 pesos-a-month (about $10), enterprising Cubans have found a raft of ways to support their households. Some skim off the profits of state-run stores, others run illegal taxis (boteros) and still others sell illegal lobster - or in our case, octopus - to visiting tourists and Cubans alike.

We arrived at the point of embarkation about noon, making our way down a winding and rather desolate dirt road that skirted alongside Mariel’s rocky coastline. Tall weeds danced in the breeze on either side of Emilio’s Muskovitch as the clouds above continued to dissipate following the previous night's rainstorm. We lurched to a rather abrupt halt outside a small house that sat no more than ten yards from the waters of the Caribbean Ocean. Lazaro and his 22-year-old son Danilo, friends of my Cuban family, had invited us on the hunt and greeted us with a couple of cold Bucaneros (Cuba’s answer to Budweiser) as we stepped out of the car.

Now, at this point I feel I should describe my rather unimpressive nautical abilities. I grew up in rural Connecticut. Yes, it’s true that I lived near the shores of the Long Island Sound but, the sound’s frigid waters aren’t exactly what you’d call “inviting” and I never bothered swimming in it all that often. I can swim but I’m no Greg Louganis (yes I realize he’s more of a diver than a swimmer). As we donned our flippers and goggles, I did everything possible to hide my fear. The fact is, octopi live in rocky waters, where they can hide amid holes in the sea-floor. Last night’s thunderstorm had left the ocean in a very turbulent state. As a result, I couldn’t help but imagine my skinny body being slammed into razor sharp corals by rogue waves. I asked Emilio about how far out we’d have to swim in order to find our prey. “No more than a few hundred meters” came Emilio’s reply. Great.

Our equipment was about as simple as it gets. A coat hanger fashioned into a hook, complete with wooden handle would be used to poke around in whatever holes we came across on the sea-floor. The idea was to snag an octopus with this thing and then race up to the surface before running out of air. At that point, our prey would be attached to a long line of hooks bobbing on the surface thanks to several empty soda bottles. One of us would tow the line in behind the hunters.

Photo: Lazaro stands beside a pile of fresh octopus. In the foreground rests the makeshift hook used to hunt the creatures.

The swim out to the hunting grounds was arduous to say the least. Struggling against the current, I sapped my strength after the first 15 minutes, at which point, Emilio asked if I needed to go back. That’s when the “machismo” kicked in. “Of course not. Why, are you tired?” I was a bit worried these guys would mistake me for a “mariquita,” a Cuban term roughly translating to “sissy.” Emilio cocked his head as if to say “oh, OK, sorry about that” and sped off ahead of me. After what seemed like an entire day of swimming, we had arrived at our target area. I turned around and noticed the town of Mariel had become so tiny in the distance that I could no longer make out individual figures strolling along the shoreline. No boat. No life jacket. Nothing. I was experiencing a rather odd sort of jubilant terror.

Over the course of the next 30 minutes, the four of us took turns diving to the sea-floor. My first attempts were feeble to say the least but finally, after the fourth or fifth attempt, I broke the surface with an octopus wrapped firmly around my hand. Emilio grabbed, disemboweled and hooked it to our towline in one fell swoop. We had brought up well over a dozen octopi and the sky seemed to be changing rather rapidly. With that, we made the decision to head back to dry land.

Getting back to shore was full of its own hazards. Although we were swimming with the current - and thus exerting less energy - the remnant waves kicked up from the previous night’s thunderstorm would pick me up and slam me down at regular intervals, leaving my face mere inches from the rocky seabed. As if that weren’t enough, I had to be mindful of my heading. Emilio had stressed the importance of staying right behind Danilo, who knew the exact route necessary to take in order to avoid a wide variety of submerged obstacles. The closer to shore I got, the closer my nose came to the rocks beneath me with each passing wave until finally, I was able to extend by arms and grab hold of terra-firma. As I righted myself in the rolling surf I caught a glimpse of Danilo’s wife, seated on the family patio. Beside her sat several cold Bucaneros. My Bucaneros. I’ll be damned if I hadn’t earned them.

Photo: After the hunt, Danilo washes the salt water off his body as Emilio looks on.

That evening, as the temperature dropped into the mid-seventies and the sun disappeared below the horizon, four men sat together gutting octopus bodies while sharing stories of conquered women and terrific hangovers. Tired and hungry from the hunt, we decided against selling our bounty, opting to coat it in salt and citrus juice for our own consumption. The following day would involve even more swimming, this time in search of conch, and I’d need to pack in the calories if I wanted to conquer the waves. God forbid these guys should think I was a mariquita.

A Night With the CDRs

Photo: Dusk through the windows of my bedroom in Havana.

“Tonight you’ll see what it means to live in Cuba. Tonight you’ll understand what it is to live in fear.”

As night fell, Havana’s oppressive heat gave way to a gentle, sweet-smelling Caribbean breeze. The power had gone out midway through my shower and I found myself using a 5-gallon bucket and soup ladle to rinse the soap off my body. As the last remnants of the Irish Spring I’d brought with me to Cuba for my family rolled off my body, I rested my chin on the tiny square window sill that looked out onto the side lawn of the house from the shower. I have a mind that tends to wander and meander through the oddest of topics. Had my great grandfather rested his chin on these very same tiles at some point during La Revolucion? How had this very same bathroom changed over the past 40-plus years – what types of colognes and liniments lined the medicine cabinet the day Fidel marched into town. How did it smell the day night fell on Havana?

Suddenly, my cousin Emilio began to rap on the door; “Oye, let’s go,” he whined, “we’re going to be late,” he added as he tapped on the face of his watch. I tossed on an old tee shirt, took off my watch and exchanged my new sneakers for a pair of ratty flip-flops. I’d need to pass as an islander if I wished to be easily accepted at the party. We hopped into Emilio’s Muskovitch and rumbled on down the road.

Earlier that afternoon, Emilio had set the agenda for the evening during a dinner of yucca and rice. My visit happened to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Committees for Defense of the Revolution (CDR), the government’s nationwide system of neighborhood eyes. Bad-mouth the government within earshot of these folks and you can expect trouble. Ours was a house divided by the CDRs, as Emilio’s sister was the neighborhood CDR chief, something her mother – my aunt Cuca – found so repulsive, she made it a point to listen to Radio Marti broadcasts from Miami whenever her daughter was within earshot. Tonight was to be a learning experience.

Driving through the streets of small town Cuba at night is a strangely eerie experience. The streetlights were shut off long ago, leaving the only available light to see by, that emanating from passing cars. As we made several tight turns in a cluttered residential neighborhood, we’d catch little snippets of life in Fidel’s Cuba, frozen in time for brief moments by the yellowish haze of our headlights; a boy walking his mangy dog on a frayed rope lead, a young woman perched atop the hood of a Lada, passionately kissing her boyfriend, and on every block, impromptu barbecues held street side, complete with 55-gallon drums loaded with homemade charcoal on which cooking chicken emitted a scent that mixed with the smell of the ocean and thick exhaust fumes trailing out of the tail pipes of any number of 50’s-era American cars. All of this, in celebration of the CDRs. These were the old guard celebrating, the ones who had staked everything in the revolution when it triumphed back in ’59. Nary a young face was to be seen street side. Only wiggly chins and aging jowls.

“Look at these people,” snapped Emilio. “They only continue to support him because that’s all they have left. The memory of what they thought they were fighting for.”


Photo: Emilio at the wheel of his sister's car.

Within a few minutes, Emilio pumped the brakes and brought us to a halt in front of a Soviet-.style apartment building. As the engine sputtered to a halt I slipped a small tape recorder into my pocket.

Inside the courtyard of the apartment complex, a decrepit structure blighted by peeling paint and crumbling stairwells, salsa music mixed with cheap government rum made for quite a raucous-sounding party. As Emilio and I made our way through the crowd of mostly young people, an older woman handed me a plastic glass of something that smelled more like kerosene than rum and I was introduced as a cousin visiting from a neighboring province. Toasts were made, cigarettes were lit and I began to let my guard down just a little bit.

Over the course of the next half hour, I was introduced to a dozen or so locals. Emilio told those he trusted the real story – that I was in Cuba for the first time, on a mission to unearth my roots and get to know my family for the first time. Snickers began to emanate from the faces of those around me as an older woman who served as the president of the local CDR began to speak with some of the old guard in attendance about the glories of the revolution. Most were there simply for the salsa music and free rum. “Nobody gives a shit about Fidel,” whispered the woman next to me as she grabbed my arm.

Finally, at midnight, the old CDR president asked for silence.

“Well my friends, its already midnight. The 40th anniversary of the CDRs is upon us. Long live Fidel! Long live our commander in chief. Fatherland or death, we will succeed!”

Photo: Fidel Castro appears on the weekly television roundtable, "Mesa Redonda."

At first I sat silently through her recitations until I felt a tug at my right arm. “Oye, you’ve got to say it, you’ve got to pump your fist,” whispered Emilio. I thought for a few very brief moments. If I were to pump my fist in the air and give out a “long live Fidel” chant, it would feel like spitting on my own family. Forgoing the fist-pump however would most surely result in trouble. Too many people at the event knew my cousin and his association with an overt “anti-revolutionary” would garner attention. I crossed the fingers of my left hand, took a gulp of air and exclaimed “Venceremos!” (We will win!) in response to the customary statement, posed as a sort of timid question “Patria o meurte?,” Fatherland or death?

Fatherland or death. My aunt Cuca had brought up that very topic earlier in the day, railing on about the way Cuban school children were indoctrinated into party policy by repeating those very same statements at the compulsory rallies their parents often attended in downtown Havana. Is “Patria o Muerte” so different from the pledge of allegiance I myself had grown up with during grade school in rural Pennsylvania? The difference lay in the fact that American statements of patriotism don’t often involve the topic of death unless you live in New Hampshire (Live Free or Die). “What does a 12-year-old know of politics?” said tia Cuca. “Why does my child need to sing of the glories of Fidel every morning in the schoolyard?” “The only thing Fidel ever brought us was misery.”

Over the course of the evening, glasses of rum continued to be foisted upon me until the alcohol began to assist in the pulling of my heart strings. Visions of what had happened to my family began to play in my head. This, combined with my earlier fist pumping caused the tears to begin to well up in my eyes until finally, I asked Emilio to take me home. Guilt had indeed set in. We left the sweaty smell of revolutionary indoctrination at 1:30 in the morning. Not a word was uttered between us on the ride home. I got the point, primo. I got the point.

Photo: Gerardo's 1960 journal.

Of Musty Journal Pages and Black-Ops Plots

Funny what a grandson can turn up among the musty papers of a shuttered filing cabinet.

A few weeks after the death of my grandfather, Gerardo, I took to the task of sifting through the detritus of his life, organizing decades worth of paperwork with my mother, Rosi, tossing out garbage bags full of old bills, checkbooks, receipts and tax returns. One of the last repositories of “stuff” to catch my attention was an old filing cabinet, which for years, had sat at the back of their suburban New Jersey garage.

A quick search through the first three drawers revealed nothing but odds-and-ends, bits-and-bobs of dull paperwork: a 1949 Hertz Car Rental card from Havana, 30-year-old office correspondence, maps of U.S. maritime shipping routes (he was in the container ship business). Rather dull stuff. The real gems were tucked away in drawer number four. Wedged in the back of the bottom drawer sat a black soft-cover book titled “Journal 1960.” Bingo. Our family had fled Cuba in 1960, this had to contain something of interest.

The book gave off the pungent smell of age. I’m somewhat of a connoisseur of printing ink odors. I revel in the act of sticking my nose into the spine of a new book, inhaling the wonderful smell of commercial ink with abandon. Screw Testor’s – a new photo book offers an even more complex bouquet than any tube of glue ever will.

As I used my thumb to flip through the book’s pages, I happened upon a vellum business card neatly tucked into the month of May.

Dr. Juan A Orta Cordova
Director General – Jefe de Despacho
De Las Oficinas del Primer Ministro

Chief of the Prime Minister’s Office? Fidel Castro’s private secretary? Interesting, although not that incredible. Gerardo had been meeting with the revolutionary hierarchy – including Che Guevara and Fidel Castro – for months in the run-up to his flight from Cuba. Noted in the Cuban shipping industry, he had been slated to run the Mambiza Shipping Lines, a new line created by the Castro regime, composed of ships seized by the revolutionary government.


Photo: Juan Orta's business card, as found in Gerardo's journal.

That night as I sat sniffing that old piece of vellum – alright, I’m kidding – I began to probe into the life of Juan Orta. What follows is the stuff of true cold warriors.

In August of 1960, a few months before Gerardo and much of the family left Cuba forever, the CIA’s Richard Bissell approached Colonel Sheffield Edwards, then director of security, with hopes of identifying any assets that might assist in the assassination of Fidel Castro. Bissell and his CIA boys were eventually introduced to one Johnny Roselli, a high-ranking member of the Las Vegas mafia who had connections to Cuban gambling.

During a September 14, 1960 meeting at the Hilton Plaza Hotel in New York City, CIA operatives made their pitch to enlist Roselli in an assassination attempt against Castro. Roselli, in-turn, introduced the operatives to “Sam Gold” and another individual identified as “Joe,” both of whom had connections in Cuba. The two men were later identified as Salvatore Giancana and Santos Trafficante.


Photo: The boys: Roselli, Trafficante and Giancana.

At the suggestion of Giancana, a set of lethal pills would be ferried to a perspective nominee, Dr. Juan Orta, a Cuban official who had direct access to Castro and had - at one time - been receiving gambling kickbacks. Six poison pills were subsequently furnished to Orta and the plan was set in motion. In the end however, their “man in Havana” failed in various attempts to dose Castro’s drinks, suffered cold feet and pulled out of the operation.

It is very likely that Gerardo never knew Orta’s true identity during his meetings with Havana’s top-cats. His business card had sat forgotten in a garage for over 40 years and I’m not sure how he would have reacted to my discovery. I remember him as a man of impeccable morals. Although he was a bitter opponent of the revolutionary regime, Orta’s contacts with La Cosa Nostra certainly would have left a bad taste in his mouth. In looking back, it seems rather likely that Gerardo would have pulled out of his early dealings with Castro and Che, not wanting to deal with someone of Orta’s ilk. If that had happened, a 20-something grandson in suburban New Jersey would never have discovered detailed accounts of meetings with “Dr. Castro,” “Conchita Fernandez” and “Che” in a long-overlooked journal wedged tightly into the back of a rusty filing cabinet.

Here’s to mold, mildew and memories. Cheers!

Beginnings

Photo, L-R: Lola looks on in surprise as her sister-in-law, Cuca, visiting from Cuba, breaks a wishbone with Lola's daughter-in-law, Yolie. This was the first time the family had eaten at a common table in some 40 years.

“And in what year did they take your mother away from us Mr. Quintanal?”

The first words spoken to me by a rather acerbic Cuban immigration officer thumbing through my travel documents stung just as much as I thought they would. No one had “taken” my mother, Rosi away from Cuba. In late 1960, she, along with her brother Gerardo, grandmother Beatriz, father Gerardo Sr. and mother, Lola were forced to flee the island after the new revolutionary government had taken hold.

They left with nothing – well, almost nothing. Unbeknownst to my grandfather, Lola had sewn several pieces of jewelry into the collar of her coat. “We’ll have to sell these if we go hungry” was how she put it to Gerardo Sr. when he questioned her, seething with a quiet anger as their plane entered U.S. air space. Had the “contraband” been discovered, the family would most likely have suffered a fate similar to that of the unfortunate fellow seated just a few rows behind them on that fateful Pan-Am flight. After the plane had begun its initial taxi in Havana, it was brought to an abrupt halt. Several M-26 militiamen -- long arms slung over their shoulders -- boarded the plane and hustled him away at gunpoint. No one said a word. No one asked where he was going. They didn’t have to.

Photo: At left: Lola stands with her mother, Beatriz outside the family's home in Havana. At right: At her Pennsylvania home, Lola reads a 1964 letter sent to her husband, Gerardo Sr. by her father-in-law, who remained in Cuba, unwilling to leave his daughter, a Castro supporter, behind.



Almost exactly 43 years to the day of that event, my brother Miguel and I found ourselves standing in the very same airport our mother had in 1960. We stood in line at immigration with perhaps two-dozen ex-pats whose emotions ranged from jubilation to sorrow. A lonely woman standing in a line directly across from us caught my eye immediately. Hands shaking, tears in her eyes, this was – without a doubt – her first trip back to the land of her birth. I tried to light a cigarette but soon found my trembling hands had been infected by some of her fears. This was my first trip to Havana and the beginning of a project to document our family’s story.

The seeds of our journey had been planted in the Spring of 2001. Our mother’s uncle Emilio and aunt Cuca had finally been deemed old enough – and thus not a flight risk – by the Cuban government to obtain exit visas to visit us in the United States. My grandfather Gerardo, by that point nearly 90 years of age, stood in complete and utter shock when his younger sibling walked into his New Jersey home. The two hadn’t seen each other in some 40 years. For an entire week we sat around a common table, exchanging stories and filling in the missing pieces of our lives. High-test cups of ultra-sweet Cuban coffee flowed across the table like a river, every sip peppered with a memory from a long-since dead and buried Havana. All-the-while, Emilio kept a wrinkled hand atop his older brother’s shoulder.

As the week drew to a close and Emilio and Cuca’s departure crept nearer, Gerardo began to show his age. Growing tired at the end of each meal – try as he might – his head would inevitably descend toward the tabletop until sleep overtook him. Finally, on the evening of April 25th -- the day Emilio and Cuca said their last goodbyes and set off for the return trip to Havana -- Gerardo said what seemed to be a final “hasta lugeo” to his daughter, Rosi and slipped away into death as he slept. Shortly therafter, I began sketching out an idea for a project that would serve to tell the story of both halves of our family – those left behind in Cuba, as opposed to those able to flee 40-plus years earlier.

Two generations of Quintanals have been divided by the revolution. While I was busy slogging through elementary school in the 1980s, relatives of mine back in Havana who were of college age, were being denied higher educations by the Cuban government due to their lack of communist party affiliation. As I was completing my second year in college, one cousin was busy constructing a raft he hoped would ferry him and a select group of friends to the shores of the United States. The two halves of our family had developed along very divergent paths.

And so I began to amass a hoard of vintage photographs and documents, smuggling some of them out of Cuba hidden amid items in my baggage. Those pieces of history, along with current photography from both sides of the Florida Straits compose Dos Epocas.

Revolution is an ugly business. Cuba’s version is filled with stories of children pitted against their parents, extrajudicial executions and the often-times forced exile of more than a million people from a beloved homeland. Over the years, many people have asked me what I hope for in regards to the island. I’m not quite sure. On a personal level, I hope to bridge the bitter divide between an island community suffering under a rogue regime and their brothers, 90 miles away, who seem to have transformed a fight for democratic change into nothing more than a political juggernaut, full of all the corruption and back-scratching that plagues politics the world-over. Cuba’s is a story of families, of people. All too often, those of us living abroad, far from her shores, forget that. Politics be damned. Broken bridges must be mended. There’s rum to be drunk and I, for one, would like to do it in my uncle Emilio’s backyard.

Photo: A U.S. Immigration ticket is stapled inside the Cuban passport Rosi used to enter the United States in 1960.

Welcome to Dos Epocas, A Flight of No Return. This photo-blog will serve as a repository for photographs, documents and other elements of a documentary project seeking to bridge the divide between two halves of a Cuban family: those able to leave Cuba shortly after the 1959 revolution as opposed to those who stayed behind.

For several years now, I have been traveling back-and-forth from Havana, photographing, writing and researching documents pertinent to this piece. Within these pages you'll find the story of a violent revolution develop through the eyes of a family separated by 90 miles of water and nearly five decades of sorrow and rancor. What you will not find within this site is political propaganda. I am a journalist and as such, I seek to evaluate facts, not opinions. While my own thoughts on the Cuban Revolution are quite passionate, I seek to impart truth here. That said, it is my hope that this site will become a place for interested parties to search through a rich stew of information, taking with them what bits seem relevant to their own lives.

With the imminent passing of Cuban President Fidel Castro, a new era in Cuban history is about to begin. Over the next few years, a historical interpretation of the events of the last five decades will be assembled and repositories of documents and personal accounts such as this one will become more-and-more important. In 1953, during his trial following the Moncada Barracks attack, Fidel Castro stated "history will absolve me." Now that El Comandante en Jefe is about to exit the world's stage, it's time to find out how that statement measures up. Let the dialogue begin.